Eastern is making it easier for faculty, staff and students to track legislation that affects them.

Through a new Web site called EIU Legislation Tracker the Eastern community can look at different Illinois bills.

Julia Abell, administrator in planning and institutional studies, and Jill Nilsen, vice president for external relations, came up with the idea of being able to view the bills online. Before the Web site was created, they used to e-mail out the bills to everyone on campus that it affected. For Nilsen and Abell, the process became too time consuming and something had to change.

“It has really made communication about legislation concerning Eastern much more convenient,” Nilsen said.

Ideas were collaborated between Nilsen and Abell and put to life through Ryan Gibson at the Center for Academic Technology Support starting in December.

Three different sites are included within the Legislation Tracker Web site.

Abell and Gibson only access the first one. At this site bills are placed online and categorized along with a link to the legislation site in Springfield to view the whole bill.

The second site is password protected and only about a dozen people, such as Eastern’s vice president and president have access to it. This site is a comment page where everyone with access is able to comment on the bills that are going to affect them.

“It is important for us to keep track of legislation in Illinois because it has such a big impact on us,” Gibson said. “They can comment and collaborate on this site.”

The public views the third site so they can have an idea of what is being tracked. On this Web site, the public is able to view the different categories of bills such as budget, pension/retirement, teacher education, financial aid and facilities/physical plant.

There are many different reasons why the Web site was created, Abell said – the main reason is for comments.

“It is really difficult to get the bills out to the campus and comments back,” Abell said. “We just thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have a Web site and Ryan Gibson helped us create what we wanted.”

Abell and Gibson agree that it is an easy site to use because one can search by last updated and by the different categories.